They're not serious, right?

The BBQ Pit
61

I swear if we keep on the “don’t feed your baby X till they are X age” route peanut butter will be the most effective tool for wiping out the enemy.

Also guns can hurt you, pointy sticks can hurt you, pointy knives can hurt you and falling down can hurt you.

They can never make falling down illegal. I’m not so sad about the others…ok maybe a little bit sad about pointy sticks…it’s winter now, sticks make good firewood.

62

Speaking as someone who has seen more than their fair share of pointy stick violence, I can honestly say that I would rather be stabbed with a knife. That picture with the neat row of stitches would be an open jagged wound with a pointy stick. Seriously. Stabbings and shootings are often very clean, limited affairs. Blunt trauma and blunt penetrations aren’t. People can and do get accidentally injured by pointy sticks.

And, if pointy knifes are useless, then why does the good doctor insist on pointy scalpels? We are nothing but meat, no?

And you can have my steak knife when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. :mad:

63

I know nothing of pointy sticks. It is just fun to say. Try it! Pointy sticks, pointy sticks, pointy sticks. SEE, wasn’t that fun.

I’m sure pointy knives and pointy sticks both make excellent jagged wounds, only one makes good firewood though.

Ok I am sorry.

64

pointystickspointystickspointysticks!

I really joined this thread to say pointy sticks. But seriously, pointy stick stab wounds hurt…and don’t heal well. Knife stabs heal much better.

The angry face was to conjure up mental images of Charlton Heston standing in front if the NRA saying that quote, but replacing ‘steak knife’ with ‘gun’ but that might be an American reference that is somewhat confusing to a kiwi.

65

Shit we haven’t had a male PM for eons…violence is now illegal :wink:

66

pointy sticks! pointy sticks! pointy sticks! pointy sticks!

That IS fun! :smiley:
[Charlton Heston]You’ll get my pointy stick when you pry it from my cold dead hands[/Charlton Heston]
Wasn’t he the Omega Man? Fighting futuristic vampires? He NEEDED those pointy sticks.

67

Not so. Having lived in New York (tough laws), the Boston area (tough laws), Los Angeles (tough laws), Fort Worth (not so tough laws), etc, I’ve observed that people will still get shot or stabbed or battered regardless of any laws that made it “more difficult”. Shootings, stabbings, axe murders (that really happens), stranglers, vehicular homicide, pointy sticks, even death by attack dogs, etc. So again, what are the obvious reasons? Psychos and criminals don’t obey the laws. Why don’t we just outlaw crime? That would make it more difficult. Hmmmm.

68

Oh, not this again. Much as it makes for an amusing “Those crazy Limeys” story, here are the key facts:

  1. This is not a government policy proposal, it’s a suggestion by one group of emergency medicine doctors in one hospital. These doctors spend a lot of their working time stitching up serious knife wounds - hence their over-the-top response to the problem.
  2. The UK did not ban guns with an aim of “reducing violent crime”. The ban on privately owned handguns was taken in the aftermath of the Dunblane Massacre, when a man with no criminal record used his legally owned handgun to kill 16 children, their teacher, and himself. The main aim of the ban was to prevent this sort of crime - the “senseless, random shooting”. It was expected that a knock-on effect would be that career criminals would find it harder to get guns. In fact, market forces have led to a cottage industry in converting replicas. As I understand it, illegal guns are relatively cheap, but bullets are very expensive.
  3. The murder rate in the UK is perhaps a quarter that of the US, but the violent crime rates are similar. I would suggest that part of the reason for this apparent dichotomy is that in the US an assault, be it domestic or part of a straightforward robbery/mugging etc., is more likely to use a more lethal weapon. So to the extent that knives are less likely to kill than guns, then there is a benefit to the low incidence of gun ownership current in the UK.
69

“Can sharp stick control be far behind?”

  • Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
70

Shut up! :slight_smile:

71

To be truly and completely fair, it would have to be a very valuable antique steak knife that he received for his birthday, kind of like the musket he was talking about when he said ‘from my cold dead hands.’

Which to me is the absolute epitome of extremist reactionism. One single crime was used as the basis for a nationwide ban on firearms. One man, one crime, and an entire nation (well, the law-abiding folks, anyway) disarmed. It seems like such an absurd overreaction I can’t even fathom the thought process there.

Deprive millions of rights because of the actions of one?

72

You got it! Absurd is a good word for it. Don’t punish the creep who did it, punish the whole country.

I’m joining the NPSA (National Pointy Stick Association).

73

What on earth are you talking about?
Do you not understand the UK culture?
Our regular police are unarmed.
We have no tradition of gun ownership for defence.

There was a previous gun massacre:

‘On 19 August 1987 a small village in Berkshire became the setting for what was then the biggest mass murder in British history.
Heavily armed with a Kalashnikov, an automatic rifle and a Beretta pistol, Michael Ryan took to the streets of Hungerford firing at anyone in his path.’

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4075055.stm

The main group of people affected by this **very popular ban ** were target shooters.
‘An entire nation disarmed’? Rubbish! I estimate there would be a few thousand member of gun clubs affected. Nobody else. We don’t use guns for home or personal protection in the UK.

Could you please find out the facts before spouting about ‘the absolute epitome of extremist reactionism’ and ‘such an absurd overreaction I can’t even fathom the thought process there’.

74

If you read mks57 post and link, you can see that there* was* -before 1920 when guns were banned. Not to the extent of the frontier US, sure, but still…

75

You need to learn to differ between the qualitative and the quantitative.

76

Excuse me? It was a simple and direct question. How’s about giving a simple and direct answer?

77

I’m coming with you! I will never again find myself on the business end of a pointy stick without a pointy stick of my own!

On a mostly unrelated ** and definitely TMI** pointy stick note, has anyone ever seen that real life ER show where the guy fell off the roof and impaled himself on a bush that had recently been pruned and got a 2" wide pointy stick rammed up his ass so hard it stopped right before it pierced his heart? I saw part of it…once…and I have never been the same! :eek: doesn’t cut it! :eek: :eek: :eek:

gotomyhappyplacepointystickpointystickpointystickgotomyhappyplace

78

Um, that was 85 years ago. Don’t you think it’s possible that a new tradition and culture has developed since then? Why is a statement of attitudes today comparable to what attitudes may have been four score and five years ago?

79

Already given. How about you deal with it?

I’ll give you a clue. Saying “x sometimes happens” is not a refutation of the suggestion that “y makes x happen less often”.

80

The fact that the UK is the kind of place in which the actions of one, maybe two, people are enough for the government to shit on the liberty of all, and for the ‘all’ to cheer about it.

I’ve never seen people so happy to give up liberty, nor so extremely reactive to one small event before.

I never said anything about why people own firearms. I said that it seems completely batshit insane to me to react to one act, committed by one man by having millions of people turn over their rights.

I guess you don’t understand that what blows my mind is that it was so freaking popular. I can’t imagine people so eager to say ‘Yes, nanny government, please protect me from myself!’

I know the facts, glee. I still can’t understand what kind of fucked up thought process it takes to go from ‘that guy shot a few people’ to ‘I oughta give up all my guns.’

That, to me, is nothing but a knee jerking so hard it might rip the leg right off.

Now you have people who want to ban knives because of stabbings. What in the bloody blue fuck led these doctors to even consider something like that as a good idea. ‘Hey, there’s some crimes happening, so uh, let’s take these non-criminals and fuck up their kitchens.’

What made people in the UK so quick to think the solution to a few crimes is to enact a nationwide ban?